Travelling up Through Oregon and Washington

On this leg of the trip we were trying to balance getting home... and not driving all day and all night! We decided to make a few pit stops on the way back up through Oregon and Washington.

Our first stop was Gold Beach, Oregon. This was selected mostly for it's proximity as about half way to Portland, but also because we wanted to go back to the coast and make sure that we went to Bandon to pick up Steve's favourite black liquorice chocolate 😀 The drive from Calistoga was about 7 hours, which is really as much as Steve and I want to spend in the car. Neither of us are particularly fond of long drives (perhaps remnants from our childhood road trips). Let's just say we were both happy to get out of the car when we got to Gold Beach!

I don't have much to report from this part except that Gold Beach was relatively inexpensive... probably due to the fact that there did not appear to be much to do except look at the coastline... which was beautiful, by the way 😀

It was also cold! Not "real people cold", but "you've just spent five months in the sunshine cold"! I actually had to wear a scarf and a hoodie when we walked to get dinner. The restaurant was only 5 minutes away, but I was freezing by the time we got there! I hope this was largely due to the wind since it was apparently "warm" for this time of year.

The next day we were headed to Portland so we could stop at our favourite bookstore in the world, Powell's Books!

We did stop briefly in Bandon and pick up a few of those delicious chocolates for Steve from Cranberry Sweets. Okay, we maybe picked up more than a few 🤷

The other notable thing we saw on this drive was an "Elk Viewing Area". Yep, there were the elk just waiting to be viewed!

I took some photos so you could do some "Elk Viewing" too! 😀

This was a good place to get out and stretch our legs, because we were driving another 7 hours today! We walked a bit, and when we looked back at our car we realized how small our car actually was when we saw it next to the other big pick ups that had also stopped for a viewing. We decided to take a photo of her... this wonderful little car, that quite inexpensively drove us (and all of our stuff!) all the way down to Mexico, over to Arizona and back up to Canada! Several times on our trip people stopped and asked us if we really drove all the way from Canada in that little car! She's actually quite zippy! 😀 

After this we continued on our way up towards Portland. We decided to stay in Camas, Washington which is a 20 minute drive from downtown Portland because it was about half the price, and looked like a cute little town. We had to drive through Portland to get there and the traffic was ridiculous... I think we hit the rush hour. It reminded us how thankful we are to live in a place where the traffic isn't all that bad.

When we arrived at our hotel and got into our room, I realized that it is possibly the smallest hotel room I've ever been in... and it was cold! Steve went to turn the heat on and noticed that there was a sign on the heater saying it was broken, but there was a space heater provided. Let me just say there was not much room for said space heater, never mind us and our luggage. I went downstairs and politely asked to be moved to a room with "real heat" 😁 She offered us an upgrade to the honeymoon suite for $16 a night... when Steve heard it had a jacuzzi tub, and I heard it had heat we were sold! Let's just say this room was ten bajillion times better for a very small price... and we were happy again!

I'll do one final post about Washington (the TULIPS!) and Powell Books soon!